I've been fascinated by Easter Island ever since I saw this Smirnoff advert in a magazine when I was a kid:
I asked my dad, "what are those?" He explained, and I knew then and there I'd have to go see them one day.
That dream came true in 2013, after Dad died and left me some money - I wish he could have known where his casual description and hard-earned cash took me.
Innate geekery prompted me to go into super-fixated research mode to prepare for the trip, which then got even worse afterwards as I tried to learn All The Things to keep the magic of that once-in-a-lifetime visit alive.
Which is how, when this Radiolab tweet popped up on my timeline tonight, I knew I was looking at a mo‘ai kavakava:
Radiolab is reliably brilliant, so I investigated straight away despite having decided to devote the evening to study (ha).
But I learned something new about Easter Island, so that's studying, right?
It's an amazing story and the podcast is well worth a listen.
(Spoiler: Easter Island harbours the secret of eternal life.)
'Islomania' - the condition of finding islands irresistibly, even obsessively, fascinating & appealing.
Yes. Standing on that tiny lump of rock knowing there was nothing beyond except thousands of miles of ocean blew my mind. I'd go back in a heartbeat; I was utterly smitten:
I'd been worried about how Easter Island fared in the pandemic, so was
very relieved to learn from IWGIA publication The Indigenous World 2021 that the Rapa Nui people actually did brilliantly (p.470). They told central government
in Chile to do one after it tried to end the island's March 2020 lockdown after just nine days,
then took matters into their own hands to keep everybody safe, fed, useful
and cared for.
A lesson for us all. If only Britain were an island (ha).
Today's Photo: Ann B
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